Visionary Forces and Key Code Media welcomes the members of the Motion Pictures Editors Guild

to an exclusive event presented by Key Code MediaTuesday October 19, 2010

“Media Creation and Sharing with Final Cut Studio and Media Composer 5.0″

With the brand new release of Avid Media Composer® 5.0, Avid AMA you can now natively access and edit any movie that can be played in Apple’s Quicktime Player (including Apple ProRes)—- offering you a faster and robust way to manage your media, saving you time and money.

In this seminar, Key Code Media Senior Applications Editor- Michael Kammes will demonstrate real-world workflows for how facilities in film, post production, episodic tv and other media can begin to leverage both Final Cut Studio and Avid Media Composer® 5.0 to maximize your creative potential.

In this seminar we will discuss the following:

AJA Ki Pro and Apple Final Cut Studio —From acquisition to delivery using the codec core for Final Cut Studio suite of applications

“Knowing how to use Avid solutions is a prerequisite for working in the media and entertainment industry.” – Jennifer Bryant, Product Specialist (Ponitz Career Technology Center, Dayton Public School District)

Just when we thought DS was dead……. Avid Technology announces DS 10.5 at IBC 2010 today.

The announcement includes the following information:

Avid DS 10.5 offers an extensive feature-set to help customers manage their project pipeline, including but not limited to:

All-in-one graphics and compositing capabilities that help speed project turnaround by eliminating the need toggle between software applications to render media.

Full 2K playback or HD RGB 4:4:4 proxies for precise color correction and data management of effects and titles, ideal for finishing television projects.

REDRocket Accelerator card support to bring increased power for transcoding and the ability to render from any resolution, offering customers the real-time capabilities identical to standard video or film-based media workflows.

Increased access to the full creative toolset of AVX2 effects, including those from Boris FX, Sapphire and The Foundry, to streamline workflow at any stage of the editorial process.

Software DS 10.5 is priced at $9995 USD for professional licenses and each comes standard with a copy of Media Composer® 5 software. DS 10.5 is recommended for use with the HP Z800 workstation series.

OK….so what does this really mean? Well, since I’m only reading announcements from the web, I’ll give my best take.

1) Avid has officially moved DS off expensive low performing hardware of the Nitris BOB, not to be confused with Nitris DX. The Nitris BOB was getting old and relatively useless. On the 10.0 DS release, file independence and most of the other featured announcements had already been blessed, meaning resolution independence, Red Rocket, Stereoscopic workflow and the AVX 2.0 tool set. So the big announcement is no expensive break out box.

2) Avid includes Media Composer 5.x which effectively makes the price of Software DS 10.5 at $7,495, which is half the price of Autodesk’s Smoke on a Mac.

4) The big question that the DS faithful will want to know is where does DS fit in the roadmap of the new Avid? DS has had multiple lives going back to the mid 90’s when Microsoft was the Corporate father. Is DS alive and well? That question is a lot tougher to figure out. My take is at this price, this is the cleanest conform for Avid Media Composer systems finishing in 2K or above. The need to use DS for 444 is no longer relevant since both the Media Composer and Symphony systems can digitize and lay back in 444 with the NitrisDX IO. Will Avid Technology continue a development path or will they look to integrating feature sets into other product. DS does do some cool things that have now become overlooked, primarily the use of the integration of Elastic Reality’s morphing functions (Avid purchased Elastic Reality in 1996) and the use of the old Parallax (a 1995 purchase) of Advance (Illusion) compositing tool sets including the famous node based compositor and Matador, the excellent paint program with great roto. Of course, these technologies were cutting edge in 1996 and a lot of work has been done since in the paint environment and compositing world since then.

My personal take and perspective is that the world has changed a lot since DS was last a popular finishing tool and a good portion of Avid’s client base does not need any more than 444 which keeps them in their world of the “mediacomposer” interface. I think, where niche projects need the advanced AAF Avid conform for 2K projects, DS will have a fit and can then pass along the files to a color grading system such as Assimilate’s Scratch or Digital Vision’s Nucoda FilmMaster.

Long term, the community will need to see the feature set advancement or integration into what has been my personal recommendation I’ve given to Avid since 1999 to integrate Symphony’s interface with DS’s toolset and resolution independence.

When production deadlines are tight, and budgets tighter still, Creative Cow’s Blue NAB 2010 Blue Ribbon and Videography Magazine 2010 Vidy award winner—-CatDV is the cost-effective, flexible solution to the challenges of managing a large number of media assets. In a file-based world where the needs for a highly reliable, secure storage medium for content archiving, access and interchange, the Pro Cache5 (Cache-A) is the new industry standard back up solution.

In this seminar, we will present the CatDV asset management product working in conjunction with Apple Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer® integrated into a unique workflow leveraging Telestream Pipeline and Cache-A’s LTO5 back up technology.

Imagine having all of your assets online with a corresponding high resolution high resolution mezzanine file archived and this system being fully automated and your media being available via a web browser, it’s that easy!

“Bring High End Color Grading to Your Avid projects From Start to Finish”

Integrated Workflow Solution with Avid & Digital Vision

You are invited to an exclusive evening event that will feature a presentation of the most efficient and powerful, non destructive, file based post workflow collaboration, the Digital Vision Film Master and Avid Media Composer.

How to manage the difficult task of tracking color grading decisions across complex editorial changes

Lock picture and deliver directly to tape master, file master for film out or back to Avid for mastering

Join us for complimentary cocktails and appetizers and also meet Keith Roush, Senior Colorist and Founder of Roush Media, who has been working with these innovative end-to-end workflows on a variety of exciting projects at their Burbank post production boutique facility.

Digital Vision is the first company to demonstrate a truly efficient end-to-end workflow with Avid, showcasing instant access to media and timeline metadata from Avid Unity Isis and Avid Interplay.